Work Text:
Ei doesn’t like to interrupt a moment when she’s snapping photographs. It always looks unnatural. To her, the best photos capture the ephemeral. It took her a while to realize that, but now the idea dominates her work.
Sometimes the lighting changes and that means you have to wait a whole twenty four hours for it to become the same again! Ei never has the patience.
Sometimes, the moment is perfect, however. When Ei catches Yae relaxing on a lounge chair, outdoors, she’s sure it’s perfect. And Yae looks absolutely gorgeous, and probably asleep like a tired little fox. Ei can’t quite tell. Yae’s wearing these big dark sunglasses.
Ei fumbles with the settings on her DSLR. She always shoots on manual, and the camera isn’t quite like the human eye. It doesn’t absorb light in the automatic way our eyes do, that is unless you set it to automatic. And Ei doesn’t. All the professionals shoot in manual. Ei doesn’t feel professional, but she’s trying to make photography hers. After what Lumine taught her, she feels like it could be hers. A way to immortalize the mortal. But it takes a few to adjust the settings on manual.
The shutter speed. A faster shutter speed reduces motion blur but reduces the amount of light a camera lets in. A camera always bounces when pressing the button to take a photo, unless attached to a tripod. High shutter speed reduces how much motion blur can be caught from this slight bounce. No motion blur on Yae Miko, please.
There’s ISO which is just a camera’s sensitivity to light. A higher iso means more sensitivity which works great in a dark room, but not so great when you’re trying to avoid so many pixely dots on your photo. Greater sensitivity makes the image look like a jpeg and grainy. Some people are into that, but Ei isn’t right now. Ei would rather be able to zoom in during post production and see the detail of Yae’s skin.
Finally there’s the aperture, how much a lense’s diaphragm can open to also…you guessed it…let in light. Different lenses can have different apertures. A high aperture would let in less light, but give Ei a greater depth of field, meaning less of the background is blurred. Ei is fine with a lower aperture here, if the depth of field is reduced then she can focus more on Yae.
Just as Ei feels she has managed to get a hang of the settings she wants, Yae has shifted and is sitting up right with a toothy smile on her bright red lips. She’s probably wearing lipstick.
“You moved.” Ei complains.
“No, I didn’t. I’ve been sitting like this all along.” Yae says cheekily.
Ei purses her lips, frowning but looking down at her camera’s screen so she can get this new image into focus. Yae, still sitting on the lounge chair, smiles and sticks out her tongue. Ei hates how it’s so unnatural, she’d rather capture Yae Miko off guard, but Yae never quite lets her get what she wants. Whatever. Ei adjusts the focus and snaps the photo.
Putting down her camera and letting it hang from her neck, Ei marches forward to show Yae.
“Did you get my good side?” Yae asks before being shown. “Hmm, could be better.” She negs.
Ei rolls her eyes and turns her camera off. Yae laughs and beckons her closer with a single finger.
“I’m only kidding, Ei.”
Ei pouts but leans in anyways. And then they meet in a kiss.
Some moments can’t be captured on photography. Not unless you want an intruding third party. But no, can’t ever fully capture the extent of truth, not unless you know the full context going into a photo. Photography can be biased. Can be manipulated.
It isn’t perfect. No moment is.
But Ei feels she doesn’t need a photo to remember this moment. Sometimes Yae Miko does let her get what she wants.